[Qgis-user] Local Government for QGIS

[Steve Golden]

I am glad to have sparked some discussion.  Being a FOSS4G application forum,
I am not entirely surprised by some of the comments, but all are
appreciated. (sorry upfront, this turned into a long post which perhaps
would be better suited on a blog of some sort)

I am a bit envious of those individuals who work in the public sector
outside of the U.S. because it seems like there is more acceptance and
directive to use FOSS/FOSS4G as primary applications and not just something
that you "kick the tires" with.  As for the use of FOSS4G applications in
the States, I think that Randal and others summarized it pretty well (at
least perhaps for the mid-sized cities).  I knew of some cities that were
using Intergraph or MapInfo, but now it is ESRI all the way.  You read about
some larger government organizations using FOSS for GIS web services, but my
main focus, at least for this post, is small/mid-sized local government. 
ESRI seems to have done a very good sales job with their "ArcGIS for Local
Government" branding.  And like my original post suggested, if you look at
all of the tools, apps, and maps that ESRI provides for "free" (yes, this is
part of the sales propaganda) it makes their product look really good for
local governments might see it as a great GIS entry point or for those older
systems looking to extend into more web mapping or application development. 
And as others pointed out, there is the reality that you have to have staff
that are knowledgeable in open source and/or willing to figure things out. 
Maybe things will change over time, but the majority of people working in
GIS learned with commercial software and probably haven't had the
opportunity or need to look beyond what they know best and are comfortable
with. 

Strange as it may seem, I work in local government in the Bay Area, CA (i.e.
Silicon Valley) and like Randal stated and as far as I can tell, most of the
local governments look around at one another and if one city has a working
solution, the others pretty much duplicate with some variations (not
necessary a bad idea as long as you duplicate an intelligent solution). 
When I talk GIS to staff at other cities, people generally want to discuss
the latest tools and functions in ArcGIS.  At times I've tried to encourage
others to look outside the box, but I generally get a chilling look or
responses as if they don't have a clue that there are other technologies out
there.  However, I also think there are a lot of mid-manager, non-GIS,
non-technical individuals that are leading cities, control the budgets and
staffing and don't really know anything except for what the majority of
cities are using and what is advertized to them.  And like another poster
stated, a lot of managers are more comfortable spending a bunch of money on
a commercial solution that is advertised to work.  Paul Ramsey has some
great  presentations <http://www.cleverelephant.ca/writings.html>   that
speaks more to this which I can't agree more.

It seems to me and others (based on comments in this thread and across the
net), that the FOSS4G solutions (QGIS probably leading the way in desktop
GIS) have evolved and are starting to replace commercial providers like
ESRI.  If you follow ESRI products, you've probably seen the changes to try
to include more "free" functions, tools, and access to certain data formats
to keep up with the FOSS4G counterparts.  But alas, they are doing more to
lock in their customers with the ESRI centric data specifications/formats
and online user accounts which is leading to some consternation, well maybe
a  revolt
<https://geonet.esri.com/groups/arcgispro/blog/2015/04/24/arcgis-pro-is-this-the-start-of-a-revolt-against-esri#comment-14969> 
.

While the foundation of my initial post (and even this one) is a little ESRI
bashing (even though that the organization that I work for primarily uses it
and is looking to sink further into it), and pondering the more wide spread
use of FOSS4G, what my real aim was to understand if there was anyone
looking to extend QGIS to include more "applied" solutions for local
government.  I hate to think that replicating exactly what commercial
providers are doing is the right thing to do, but I wonder even though QGIS
has matured greatly over the past few years, and there are now supported
open stacks of FOSS4G applications like OpenGeo and consulting firms who are
providing support for QGIS, if there is something missing to make QGIS an
easier entry point for a GIS software solution for local governments?  I
suppose if there are more individuals who are willing to share map
templates, customizations of QGIS, workflow processes, etc and if these were
aggregated in some manner, then perhaps it would be a start.  I suppose in
the global use of QGIS, what does local government mean and what does it do? 
Solutions might need to be sub-divided by country or region. 

Well, just some more thoughts...

Steve



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